Sour Aging Projects Update

We currently have four different beers that we are souring in barrels at the brewery, most of which have several variants. This week we added fruit to barrels of our Berliner Lager and thought that now was a good time for a status report on sour program.

Berliner Lager – In July we filled up some oak barrels with our Berliner Lager. This week we split the barrels into four different varieties and added something extra to each. Three of them got fruit, either cherries, cranberries or plums. The last variety got Brettanomyces, a wild yeast. We are hoping to release these beers around Thanksgiving.

Golden Sour and Sour Red – This golden lager has been aging in red wine barrels with Brettanomyces, Lactobacillus and Pediococcus since last September. We are hoping it will be ready sometime during the winter, though we are still monitoring its progress. We will be adding fruit to some of the barrels soon.

Sour Time Lager – Sour Time Lager was meant to be a yearly release that was made using the previous summer’s Leisure Time Lager. Our first batch came out last summer. This past year we only had 3 barrels of it, so instead of a very limited release we decided to use this beer to start a Solera program at the brewery. What this means is that we divided up those 3 barrels into 20 new barrels and topped them off with fresh beer. While this means no Sour Time this year, it increases our ability to make it going forward. More importantly, this process is the start of our own house sour culture of Brettanomyces, Lactobacillus and Pediococcus that we will make use of as we continue to expand our sour program.